December 06, 2009

Live and Streaming Coverage of the Bolivian Elections

It's as if the last ten years have brought a revolution in the coverage of Bolivia online. When I started blogging, back in 2003, there was only a hand full of people covering Bolivian developments. In fact, that is one reason why I started blogging. Today, I am impressed on the kind of coverage there is of the Bolivian elections. The protagonists are Facebook, Twitter, the web 2.0 and tv feeds.

For example, if you go to Twitter, you can make a couple of searches to find yourself in the lines, at the doors of precincts, and so on. A brief and broad search for Bolivia will take pretty far, but if you want only election coverage then you have to use hash tags such as #elecciones, #bolivianelections, and #6dbol. The last being the most informative, though they are connected. At present time, there are two websites (the so called web 2.0) covering the elections. The first is part of the effort many active citizens, and might I add, young, have created: http://elecciones2.0bolivia.com/. This site, also has a feed of twitts and commentary on Facebook. The other one is www.bolivianosglobales.com. This las site covers what is going on outside Bolivia, in those cities where expat Bolivians are voting (cities such as Buenos Aires, Sao Paolo, Madrid, Barcelona, Valencia, Virginia, Maryland, Washington, DC., etc.).

If you choose Facebook as your source, you will find many of the already mentioned initiatives as well as other interested Bolivian citizens following the developments. In addition, you can find many of the media outlets such as La Razon, El Deber, Bolivia Hoy, and other interested groups.

On the main stream media side, as I said before, you find many of them in Facebook and Twitter, as well as some places such as Justin.tv. The PAT tv network is streaming live its national and international coverage of the process. Also, you can find, of course, the many newspaper websites, which are updated several times a day. But this updates are slower, of course than the Internet. Another source of information, which has been a source for quite some time are the live feeds of radios. You can visit radios such as Fides, Erbol, Illimani, El Deber has a radio as well, etc.

So as you can see, there is plenty of coverage on Bolivia, in Spanish. The coverage in the international arena is pretty much limited to the main stream media, such as BBC, AP reports, CNN International (very little), AFN, etc., and some blogs such as the one you are reading. There is one blog I recommend visiting, and that is Pronto*, which is written by a friend of mine. I recommend it because it is very informative.

PS. For most of the links, please see the side bar in this blog. Thank you.